Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a method of controlling the same, an information processing system, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Generally, a user checks a display of an operation panel of a printer apparatus if the user wishes to know what the status (state) of the printer apparatus is. Meanwhile, if a sufficient user interface is not equipped in a printer apparatus as with a host-based printer apparatus, a user can check a status of the printer apparatus on a host PC connected to the printer apparatus. In such a case, by a status notification application executed on the PC, it is possible to perform device settings, status display and the like of the printer apparatus connected to the PC.
An architecture called V3 driver (V3 printer driver) is known as an architecture for printer drivers that Windows (registered trademark) of Microsoft Corporation provides. V3 drivers are equipped with a language monitor for realizing bidirectional communication between a print spooler and a printer apparatus. Also, a vendor of each printer apparatus, by customizing the language monitor, obtains status information of a printer apparatus according to a PC and controls the printer (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-79138). In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-79138, a PC performing bidirectional communication as an RPC server with a language monitor in order to obtain status information of a printer apparatus is described.
An architecture called V4 driver, which is the architecture subsequent to V3 driver, has been supported from Windows 8 (registered trademark). In the V4 driver, customization of the language monitor is not permitted. For this reason, customizing the language monitor to perform bidirectional communication with a printer apparatus ceases to be possible. Thus, an interface for performing bidirectional communication between a PC and a printer apparatus without relying upon customization of a language monitor is provided from the OS. However, the provided interface has the restriction that it cannot be executed during printing. Therefore, it is impossible to realize obtainment of information by bidirectional communication as with the V3 driver.